“Farewell Israel” documents Islamic threat

By Ted Belman

I urge you to read the review by Rael Jean Isaac of Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam. Here’s the first paragraph.

Joel Gilbert has pulled off a remarkable tour de force: in “Farewell Israel” he has produced a technically sophisticated, visually imaginative, scholarly documentary that manages in the space of 145 minutes to investigate the belief system and history of Islam, the development of the Arab-Israel conflict (more accurately the Muslim-Jewish conflict) and the aftermath of 9/11. The documentary’s enormous achievement is in bringing all this together to show incontrovertibly the total misunderstanding of Islam that shapes the policy follies of the West in general and the U.S. and Israel in particular. The potentially deadly results are summed up in the foreboding title – Farewell Israel.

As I read through the full review, which I urge you to do, I was very much appreciative that someone had produced a full length documentary which did a brilliant job of bringing to life the messages that Israpundit is at pains to deliver. The documentary has now been put on a DVD and can be purchased for showing at your synagogue or church or where ever.

For me, Farewell Israel teaches the gospel on the conflict.

In reading an English translation of a another review of Farewell Israel in MA’ARIV by Ron Maiberg, I could not help but think how strong is the denial of this reality by the left and how quickly and easily they ridicule it. This review is one example.

With the assumption that this is the last year of a Republican in the white house, it would be advisable that Israel should enjoy a few last moments of charity. In the coming years it will be difficult to produce movies like “Farewell Israel – |Bush, Iran, and the Islamic Uprising”. This documentary DVD that went public two weeks ago and caught my eye on the internet is something that independent producers in free countries don’t produce anymore. The viewer is left at the end of 145 long and exhausting minutes with the feeling of having seen either a propaganda piece aimed at a very particular audience, or a movie for internal use of one of the western espionage organizations that was not destroyed and had fallen into “the wrong hands”. In contrast to the Bush’s disconcerting flip flop on Iran’s nuclear program in view of the upcoming elections, “Farewell Israel” has no uncertainties and reservations in it’s description of the apocalyptic reality – using cinematic techniques that were thought to have died with Lenny Riefenstahl. Islamic intention to cause great harm to the west and to destroy Israel is rooted in the definition of Islam’s existence.

When I asked Joel Gilbert, the director of the movie, whether he means total physical destruction, he answered that from Islam’s point of view the Jews in Israel can find a way to continue to exist as they were always meant to exist – under the rule of Islam and its total hegemony in the region. Israelis are very familiar with what this movie promotes – in one version or another – from their earliest history and from their first encounters in elementary school. What stirs a heavy feeling of concern are the purposeful hands that sculpted this movie, the money that funded it and the complete embrace of the Israeli right. of course, a legitimate endeavor.

[..] But there is nothing ambiguous in the DVD-cover image of the Arab fighter in a kefiyah holding a loaded Kalashnikov. The movie leads us, throughout the 145 minutes of didactic, monotonous, decisive and assertive statements, to the inevitable conclusion: Khalas Israel. Unless Israel wakes up, together with the sleepy West, to the recognition that this is what Islam commands according to its sources, its Holy Scriptures and its prophets: Conquer the Jews.

Gilbert, who started the distribution of the DVD two weeks ago and is negotiating with TV networks to show on TV, is. among other things, the leader of an impersonation of Bob Dylan musical group. [..]

It is easy to see how this movie can become a hit with the Israel supporting Christian right. Gilbert claims he produced this movie by himself. However, this is quite an expensive production, with respectable quality, animation, and archival material which in itself costs (in general) thousands of dollars per minute of broad time. For those of us born into this bubbling “publishing world” stew, Gilbert is one more violin out of tune in the philharmonic. The problem is that Gilbert’s professional credentials are quite meager for carrying such a heavy intellectual load. He helped research a book on Jabotinsky for Shmuel Katz; he learned about Islam from Eli Keddouri; he wrote a book that is a basis for a movie; and he is a friend of Tsakhi Ha’Negbi. Not exactly Dan Meridor, lacking self restraint. Katz and Ge’ulah Cohen are mentioned in the movie without relation to the context. (Seems like he is trying to discredit the message by discrediting the messenger)

Gilbert’s major villains are the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, that according to Gilbert is among those who brought about the Holocaust, the deceased Anwar Sadat that took everything while giving nothing and was murdered by “Believers”, and obviously, Achmadinejad, and in a way that is not at all amusing, Shimon Peres and Yitzak Rabin (we had an unconvincing conversation on the subject). Peres is presented by Gilbert yawning and waking up from a deep sleep in order to answer a question. The murder of Rabin is mentioned as a footnote in history.

This is a season in which the shelves of Israel and the Middle East fill up with a multitude of books and movies such that the natural inclination is to ignore them. Many of these products are “suicide bombs”. They explode in the bag on the way home.

It is frustrating and maddening that the Left refuses to take Farewell Israel more seriously.